Review & Swatches: Sunday Riley Prismasilk Eye Color in “Fool’s Gold”

This ultra-fine, luxurious long-wear formulation is air milled for extra fine texture and rich, stay-true color without color streaks. Micronized spherical pigments impart effortless blendability and instantly satisfying color payoff. This multifunctional wet and dry formula can be used as a traditional eye shadow or as precision eyeliner. It is offered in a range of finishes to satisfy any color craving, from matte to sheen to illuminating shimmers.

Sunday Riley, more commonly known for its skincare line, is now offering a makeup line at Sephora stores (the line is also available at Nordstrom). The company offers 22 eye shadow colors. This review is for the shade Fool’s Gold–a black with metallic gold flecks.

Packaging:9/10

This shadow comes in a square, plastic compact with a see-through, flip-up lid. The lid is embossed with Sunday Riley’s initials. The packaging is on the slightly bulky side, but if you’re not planning on traveling with it, it’s fine.

Quality: 7/10

Fool’s Gold a black shade at its base and is saturated with gold shimmer particles. The color has more than decent pigmentation, but the formula is problematic.

The texture of the shadow is a bit grainy. Instead of being silky (as the name suggests) and creamy, the powder seems to have a hard time sticking together, as if there are too many shimmer particles interfering with the ability of the black pigment to stay together. This results in a powder that doesn’t look smooth on the lids (without extra layering and blending) and a shadow that produces fall-out throughout the day. During a full work day wearing this shadow, I would notice flecks of black eye shadow around and under my eye that I would have to clean off.

Sunday Riley states that this shadow has an “air-milled formula” that “properly disperses the pigment evenly throughout the product for proper application.” The company even states that “if proper pigment dispersion does not happen, color streaks and non-uniform coloration can occur.” But I find that the “air-milled formula” does just that: creates streaks and non-uniform color distribution.

Without primer, the shadow starts to crease in the inner corner after four (4) hours of wear. Over primer, the eye shadow begins to crease after about five (5) hours of wear.

Ease of Use: 7/10

I don’t find that this formula blends particularly well. The grainy quality of the powder makes the shadow look patchy and forces you to do extra buffing and layering to get a smooth, diffused look. Expect to do some cleaning up of fall-out under the eye area after application too.

Price: 9.5/10

For $26.00 you get 0.14 ounces of product. You get a lot more product than with your normal single eye shadow, so even though this costs more than most other single shadows at Sephora, you get more product per dollar.

Just found your blog – and it’s great! I’m enjoying reading through all your reviews.
I’m glad you mentioned the hardness/uneven application of this Sunday Riley eyeshadow.
I bought several of these – sight unseen – last year and don’t really use any of them because they’re so difficult and dry and the application just does not look good.
So, glad to finally read a review that mentions that, even if it is a little late for me!